The GSm founding community has strong representation from people interested in the next generation of tools for structuring, manipulating and analysing dialogue and debate at different scales. Complementing these are, of course, tools that will help us work directly with the data, in order to tease out and explain hypotheses and claims that can be fed into such debates.

Gapminder is one such tool, which has been attracting a lot of attention for its compelling visualizations of time-series data. Gapminder’s director Hans Roslings gives dynamic presentations with the tool, eg. at TED:

Gapminder World is all the data that they’re importing, delivered via an interactive browser app:

Gapminder World lets you explore the changing world from your own computer. Moving graphics show how the development of all countries of the world by the indicators you choose.

User scenario:

OK, now imagine that we can link easily into a specific point or clip in Gapminder World or Motion Chart as an evidence point, an anchor for a claim that is made within one of the other GSm discourse tools. Or that when I enter that clip in the movie player, or turn on an overlay for Community Debate: How has this data been used in arguments?, it highlights that there is apparent consensus, or a huge debate raging…